By Federica Lupis, https://www.federicalupis.com/
Author of "Fluent On The First Try" and "Why You're Not Fluent and How To Fix It"
Language trainer, interpreter and translator.
I love interesting facts, and I could spend hours on the Internet reading about them.
Did you know that:
· Polar bears are not white. (Their skin is black, and their fur looks white due to the way their sheer hairs reflect light.)
· Humans can’t lick their elbows. (I know you’re trying right now!)
· The earth is not actually round?! Don’t get excited, Flat Earthers! The earth isn’t round, but it’s not flat either! Technically, it’s an oblate spheroid.
Fun facts are so intriguing to me that I choose Libra over other brands because I can read interesting facts on the back of their products. At that time of the month when I would like to hibernate, they cheer me up and tell me more about the wonderful world we live in!
Do you know any fun facts about languages?
When I think about it, I don’t know many of them, and I think it’s time to learn more! This month we will be discussing some cool facts about languages.
Enjoy!
The basics
Before I share with you some mind-blowing facts (at least I hope), let’s see if you can answer these ‘basic’ questions…
1. How many languages have ever existed? And how many languages are there today?
It is estimated that around 31,000 languages have ever existed. Today, fewer than 7,000 languages survive and some linguists believe that “between 50-90% of the current world languages will cease to exist in the next century”. Wow!
There are several reasons for this:
· Over time, natural disasters, colonization and wars have reduced, if not eliminated, entire communities of speakers.
· Many people abandoned their native language in favour of a language that would give them “social and economic advantages or to avoid discrimination”.
· Finally, globalization and the “pressure to adopt the common languages used in government, commerce, technology, entertainment, and diplomacy” accelerated the whole process.
The good news is that the Internet is contributing to the revival and preservation of many languages today. More resources are now available in endangered languages and their communities can communicate on the World Wide Web.
Think about Hawaiian, Māori, and Quechua. These languages were on the verge of extinction, but the number of native speakers is now on the rise.
Governments and the general public have become more aware of the importance of preserving languages, to the point that some extinct/near extinct languages, such as Cornish have been brought back to life. Yay!
How did you go with the questions? I had no idea that over 30,000 languages had ever existed and that made me even more excited about my research on interesting facts. Let’s see what I found out!
2. Where does the word alphabet come from?
When I read the answer to this question, I couldn’t believe I never thought about it. The word alphabet comes from the Greek letters alpha and beta. Alpha + Beta = Alphabet. It’s as simple as that.
3. Which languages have the shortest and the longest alphabets?
As shown on the Guinness World Record’s website, the Rotokas of central Bougainville Island, in Papua New Guinea, has the shortest alphabet with only 11 letters, while Khmer, in Cambodia, has the longest one with a staggering 74 letters. In case you’re wondering if this means that Khmer is harder to learn, the Internet seems to agree on this: Khmer is one of the hardest languages to learn, even more difficult than Mandarin and Japanese for Westerners! I really can’t imagine anything harder than these two Asian languages!
4. What’s the oldest written language?
I am obsessed with three things in life: dinosaurs, Ancient Egypt and boardgames and I didn’t even know that I had to thank the Sumerians for creating boardgames!
Not only did ancient Sumerians hold the record for the oldest written language (around 3100 BC), but they also discovered copper and the wheel and had their own numbering system! You can read more about these awesome guys here.
5. Which country has the most official languages?
The Bolivian constitution recognizes 37 official languages. I wonder if anyone in the country can speak or at least understand all of them!
6. Which countries have no official language?
I’ve found conflicting information on this, so I’ll only tell you about the ones I could verify: the USA, the United Kingdom and Australia. If this question came up in Articulate, I would have got it all wrong!
7. The word ‘synonym’ doesn’t have a synonym.
When I read this, I got really excited, but it didn’t last long. Within seconds the word ‘equivalent’ came to mind and the Thesaurus Dictionary seems to agree with me. There may be some words that don’t have synonyms – as this article suggests – but ‘synonym’ is not one of them.
In this case, the interesting fact was that interesting facts aren’t always correct.
8. Where does the word ‘mortgage’ come from?
At a time when all we hear about is inflation, interest rate hikes and rental affordability, I found this to be quite interesting.
The word mortgage comes from the French words mort and gage which respectively mean ‘death’ and ‘pledge’. No wonder banks don’t tell us about its origin!
9. What are ghost words?
Ghost words are not words that disappear as you read them or haunt you in your sleep. As the Cambridge Dictionary says, this expression refers to ‘a word in a dictionary that is not a real word and is usually there because of a mistake’.
One of the most interesting examples is the word ‘dord’ which was the result of a misunderstanding.
A chemistry editor made a note above the word ‘density’: D or d. This indicated that both capital and small ‘d’ could be an abbreviation for the word ‘density’. However, the next person who handled this entry thought ‘dord’ was a word for ‘density’, so it was added to the dictionary and stayed there for 13 years, from 1934 to 1947, before it was removed.
You can see the original word entry and find out why this seemingly obvious mistake wasn’t so obvious, in this article by Merriam Webster.
10. What is the most common letter in English?
At first, I thought this fact wasn’t interesting at all. Why would anyone want to know? But then I thought of Wordle and realised that millions of people might be eager to know the answer! Wordle enthusiasts, here are the top three letters in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary: E – 11.1607%, A – 8.4966% and R – 7.5809%. Happy Wordle!
11. How many fake languages are there?
When I think of ‘fake’ languages, my mind immediately goes to the Dothraki from the TV show Game of Thrones and the handsome actor Jason Momoa. However, ‘fake’ languages include much more than ‘fictional’ languages.
Artificial languages have been created for various purposes such as: facilitating international communication (e.g., Esperanto), social and political purposes (e.g., Láadan), experiments in machine learning and personal entertainment. For example, you may be familiar with Pig Latin, a secret language used by children to confuse people who don’t know the rules. Oday ouyay peaksay Igpay Atinlay? (Do you speak Pig Latin?)
Wikipedia describes over 150 constructed languages but makes it clear that due to their nature, it is extremely difficult to account for all of them.
If you are interested in reading more on this topic, Mr Richard Kennaway, a Senior Research Scientist, has done an amazing job documenting over 300 artificial languages here. His work may inspire you to create your own secret language to communicate with your friends!
12. What’s the most translated document in the history of humanity?
I knew the answer to this one, but I thought that Harry Potter might have overtaken the undisputed winner by now. That didn’t happen! The Bible is still the most translated book at over 700 languages! Even more impressive, parts of the Bible have been translated into 3,495 languages!
The second most translated book, The Little Prince by Saint Exupéry sits at 382 and the third one, Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi has been translated into 260 languages.
Sorry Potterheads, Harry Potter has ‘only’ been translated into over 80 languages. You’ve got some work to do!
~ ~ ~
To sum up… there are so many interesting facts about languages that I’ve decided to tell you more about it next month! Until then, see if you can guess this: What is the fastest spoken language in the world? And no, it’s not Italian!
Thanks for reading!
I’ll catch you all next month!
If you enjoyed my article, you can discover my tried and tested language learning strategies in my books:
and here are this month's book offers:
· Kyara e l’anello degli antenati by Saveria Parisi, Italian book.
This article was brought to you by NN Occupational Health, experts in Pre-Employment Screening.
Go to the Italian version.
To read my previous article click below: